


Darling, do I scare you

by Ketchrey



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Beta escapes with the Alpha, Big brother Wash, Implied Wyoming/Florida, Other, South’s problems become Wash’s problems, scary-ass buddy cop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-05-25 05:06:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14969726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ketchrey/pseuds/Ketchrey
Summary: Agent Washington receives the A.I. that was meant for him and the universe still proceeds to crumble apart.Poor life choices? Could be.Still, he’d like to blame most of it on the small, scared voice that’s started  getting cozy inside his head.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shiranai Atsune](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Shiranai+Atsune).



 

 

It is almost like Eta, deliberately, takes up space. Like a body hogging the mattress, kicking him relentlessly in the back.

After hours were mostly reserved for running back the day’s footage. Tonight’s lack of routine could only further attribute to her torrent of a mood. 

Eta has very clearly been irked. If the vengeful romp she’s taking into his personal psyche says anything at all it says that. For now though, he would allow her the room to pace, the compliancy meant staving off a more visceral attack.

It might have taken every one of his sisters to teach him, but now Washington knew precisely when to step out of the path of a storm.

Tonight, Eta has a death grip on his nerves. The line of her conscious combing through him, runs like a live wire and seethes with friction. Washington's almost positive he is one clench of sinew away from pulling his hamstring, and it's entirely her doing. ... _Mostly_ her doing.

_“You should go to sleep.”_ Eta suggests, disarmingly out of the blue.

“How am I supposed to do that when you’re coming right out of my skin, E?”

Suddenly and sharply she is receding, transmitting shame like a slap of guilt.

It occurs to him that Eta might not have been aware of the affect her ruminating had been having on him. He makes a very visual show of putting his head back and propping his feet against the Jeep. Hopefully it resembles something of an apology.

“Where would you run to with your hijacked, computer program boy-toy?”

This grated voice cuts a shape through his thoughts.

South has sprawled in the back cab with her ankles over the passenger side. Moments earlier he wouldn’t have believed her awake.

“Were you asking me?” He probes.

South tilts her chin to where an MRE has been lodged between seats. She pries it out and rips the wrapper with her teeth, facing him pliantly. “...How have you been holding up?”

Eta bristles in warning, and the cross-connection of feedback sets every one of his hairs erect. From the get go they had been mutually agreeable on the subject of where South fell on the scale of an ally. As of late, Eta might have withdrawn her vote.

“Don’t worry about it.” Washington deflects, using the same words to bring Eta to heel. “Try to rest.”

“They don’t all like it when I cut the lights.” South stares into the dash, eyes a thousand yards gone. “Theta isn’t so... agreeable, in the dark.”

He nearly chokes and asks her when either of her A.I. had performed 'agreeably' over the last few weeks. The words die in his mouth as he looks back over the seat.

The warning signs in South had only peaked his attention recently. They had started out subtle, and enough along the lines of PTSD that for a while he had it written off as just that. They had both been dealt their share of life-altering bullshit as of late, and she had never been invasive regarding his methods of moving along.

Minutes into the spell, South still remains locked up, stiff and unblinking. There are foreign particles in her irises. The shards of an ultra violet glass, encroaching on her blown out pupils like broken rings...

Eta stutters an inhale that only he can hear.

She couldn’t cover this up, now that the ticks have fluctuated and her body’s mechanics have changed. The tension kept in her shoulders was indication enough that she knew she could go into autopilot...and she was doing very little about preventing it.

He inches forward to check her, judging the tension in her body, while Eta is razing at the back of his retinas.

Had he been paying attention, he would have recognized it much sooner. In the months following what had happened with Texas, there had been a ripple effect.

“Would you take one for me?” South croaks suddenly, both eyes still eerily distant. ...”For an hour or two?” She continues, just before Eta’s panic can snowball.

Washington unwinds, subconsciously reaching to scratch the back of his helmet. By the cold jolt to his fingers he locates the storage slot. Eta’s shiver doesn’t go unnoticed, nor does she attempt to conceal her lack of appreciation.

South ejects Iota from her set, handing him off to Washington. 

Eta rushes to the input port as he inserts to card, ready to sooth the frictions of heat from overloaded feedback. She buffers her twin algorithm’s heavyweight and compartmentalizes him off.

_"If she thinks I’m going to convene with him, she has another thing coming."_  Eta mutters, dauntlessly shutting her brother A.I. away behind a barrage of firewalls. The gesture warms his heart.

"Respecting decisions while respectively disagreeing", could be Eta’s tagline.

If only that didn’t mind him of someone... 

_“It still troubles you, thinking of her?”_ … She needles, concerned.

_I thought you wanted me to sleep._

Eta doesn’t press, neither does she indicate that he’s convinced her. She leaves that alone for now, but her concerns have reared all the same. Towards a matter more pressing.

Shivering hard enough to set off a line of nerves along his neck and shoulders, Eta’s sets her stare against South, who might now be fully asleep.

_“You have not yet witnessed the ramifications of metastability at this stage...”_

He heaves another breath, because this conversation had made it back around to South, or, whatever has her laid out in limbo over the front seats, that is.

He’s positive it’s Eta’s dominant features tangled up in him that has him making the effort to keep awake, at least long enough to hear her out. 

_“My dominant traits do not make me ill-equipped to pronounce judgement, Wash.”_ Eta fires off indignantly.

_But you will admit that yours is not exactly the most ‘unbiased’ opinion?_

Eta stares him down, and he just about mistakes it for something nearer to perplexity. It’s as close to a stalemate as they have come in weeks.

She comes up next to him, bringing with her a folder of his memory. Before he can even think of it as dangerous intent, the memory snags him in.

\--

In the Director's absence, after York had cut all his ties and allied with the androids…

“Sometimes," Her brow had wrinkled, trying her damnedest to find something. ..."It’s like I’m mixing information. … So many gaps in time. …I think I’m forgetting who...”

“Beta.” He had pressed, desperately encouraging the flash of cognition he could have sworn was in her eyes for a mere moment. “She’s in possession of the Alpha. You're going to guide us in Recovery. They want her brought back in.”

So small on the gurney, Carolina’s neck had swivelled. "The Alpha," He would never forget how her words had slurred. “... _He can make us whole_.”

\--

He reels back, overloaded with sentiment and a recounting plunge of the gut.

Eta’s metaphorical hackles have risen in a mirror of his own. The fact this memory disturbs her also, brings less comfort than it should.

_“Somethings we are meant to be scared of.”_ She says. _“You decide whether to let them tilt your awareness, and how far.”_

Suffocating. This is _suffocating_...

Calling on the memory of his most recent failure, something that had been very meticulously tucked away because it induced so much guilt…

Eta gives him a moment. She’s exasperated, but patience is one of the key components to breaking through to him. _“I know that I have been lucky, to have received you.”_

Her voice, stirringly empathetic, brings a wetness out of his already blurring eyes. 

_“And I am sorry,”_ Eta’s voice lowers.

“That was uncalled for,” He says, working it past the gnarl in his throat. 

_“I think it was though.”_ She persists, butting into him sweetly. _“You’re brave, but that makes you thick-headed. If you must be reminded of your limits from time to time…just know that I do it out of necessity.”_

“Well don’t do it again.” He grumbles, with nothing better to say to that.

She spends some more time caressing his nerves, ascertaining that he has settled down somewhat. And then she eases into the next blow.

_“We must sever our ties to Agent South.”_

Washington’s neck swivels too quickly in the dark, bringing Eta’s diminished presence to a stutter.

Her hushed voice wanes. _“It’s the way that she’s hurting. The loss of Agent North... it has strengthened my brothers’ hands. She has become close enough to threaten at merging. ...We cannot not stay with her, Wash.”_

“Not tonight.”

_“Wash,”_

“You don’t get to do this now...” He punches back. “You can’t tell me she’s going to snap like...” Wash quiets himself into his forearm. He tries to burrow further in, putting an awful strain on his neck. . _..You can’t possibly know that. Not yet._

Eta doesn’t blink, comprehending his tired resistance. Usually, the blind-loyalty bit gets him endearment points, now she only looks at him despairingly.

_“What I know, is that you aren’t safe here.”_

These are not the things one wants on the mind in the middle of the night…

_“I’ve been providing you hard evidence and visible symptoms at every opportunity, Wash.”_ She frustrated now. _“Present traces of suicidal drive indicate that she is rudderless and unstable. These are all the things you elected to ignore—and now they pose a threat.”_

Washington listens carefully, an unsettling the tremor riding up his spine, harnessing the paranoia he had been effectively muzzling from the start of this assignment.

_Do you trust me?_

_“In this case I would have to abandon sentiment.”_ She says without hesitation. _“You realize you are asking that I trust you to know when a fellow agent will decide you are no longer of value and choose to do away with you?”_

_You don’t think I could kill her?_ He does not look into the front seat when South hums and rolls over in sleep.

Mercifully, Eta doesn’t pursue it. _“My programming allows for me to process intelligence in order to make aptitude judgements of a human’s mental state.”_

_How am I doing?_

_“It’s debatable.”_  Her presence shifts, as if it had only occurred to her how stubborn he is.  _"You have to let me protect you."_

Something clenches in his chest. He swallows, fixing his voice. _Could you tell me...Can you just, tell me if it’s still her? If I’m gonna have to deal with this—_

_“She’s still in there.”_ The air between her and his cheek warms with static. For a moment, he feels an unmistakable brush against his skin. Gently it lifts, and Eta’s voice returns in his head. _“...for how much longer, I couldn’t say.”_

_So keep me posted, all right?_

_“…Thick-headed.”_ Eta huffs her resignation. _“This behavior of yours borders on moronic.”_

Washington chortles, the sound dead and unaccompanied across the desert. 

_“I am taking care of you.”_  Eta's touch comforts through him like warm water. _“Consented or not, I will have you survive."_


	2. Chapter 2

On the stretched outback of Sandtrap, the roads are beyond gnarled.

Red terra dust has shaved a thick blanket into the Jeep’s interior. For mile by mile, the transparent impacts of sand and stone pellets can be heard under the hood, irregular and unrelenting. A twink-twanking crescendo that could mean nothing good for the radiator underneath.

Despite all the acclaim it might have earned as an all-terrain vehicle, the Warthog has yet to thank them for this long haul of off-roading. Technical issues are flowing in at a fortuitous rhythm, and don’t look to ease off anytime soon.

Although the helmet filters offer protection, sand has still reached in through the ventilators’ tandem slots. Wash has since felt the cut of tiny glass pebbles up inside his nostrils and searing away the pores of skin compressed against Kevlar. Between stops they’ve been coming upon less and less water to guzzle, much less for scrubbing at skin that has been cracked open, raw.

Far be it for him to be the one who calls attention to their misfortune, not while South was serving as the torch-bearer well enough for both of them. High on her list of complaints had to be the damage the desert climate has wreaked upon their equipment. In the latest sand storm they had bunkered through, the antenna from their radio pack had been dislodged. From where South is concerned, this has been the end-all in terms of catastrophes.

Were it ever to come down to it, of course any one of the A.I. fragments had enough juice to transmit a locator beacon directly from local mods. These are beacons strong enough to punch through to outer planet systems, if desperation called for it. Eta had made that pristinely clear for him, after the first time she’d been made to sit through one of South’s unforecasted outbursts.

The last week alone, South has exhibited further signs of unwiring. For the moment, her primary obsession is still to reestablish them with a solid transmitter, key to maintaining their pursuit of the Gamma unit.

Embedded in this tunnelled vision, she’d left him alone to fret over their rapidly diminishing rations. Eta is performing inventory checks ritually: first thing in the morning, twice between stops, and again in the evenings. He had ran the chart by South once, only left discouraged when she disregarded the evaluation and proceeded to joke about maybe fitting into a size four by the mission’s end.

“My turn to drive?” He winces, absorbing the awful rasp of his voice beneath the rattling engine. Wetting his mouth with a cough, he begins again. “...I can take over from the next check point.”

South only shifts enough to slam him with her gold-visored glare. “You want us to switch up now? Another hour and we could be bearing down on them—if I pull off this trail we’ll be losing ground.”

His mouth opens to argue and then schools itself shut. It scratches too much.

A slight nudge has him leaning over to Eta’s plea for attention.

 _“Fuel tanks are at an eighty-three percent deficiency. What would make the most sense would be for us to pause briefly and refill. There will be no time lost that can’t be made up through night travel.”_ Like it’s an after thought she might get reprimanded for, Eta adds on. _“Pleasant company as South has been, if it’d help our quest any I can see about administering her a mild sedative?”_

It is so off-book, ludicrous, innocuous and so concisely ‘Eta’, and Wash finds himself riding very close to laughter. — _Laughter_ , while the odds are everyone he had worked with or for these past twenty-six months is either dead or—

His suppressed chortle might have been caught in South’s peripherals, as she turns her head toward him. The motion is viper-like enough to sober on-the-spot. The inherent gloom seeps into place and South rotates her stare back out to the road.

In his grudge, Wash gives a silent gesture to Eta and she pulls up the map display.

After the radio went down, South had more or less seized control of the portable tracker, that which now sits in her lap, battery low and bouncing with every dip of the road. He has the self-preservation to know that reaching into her thighs wasn’t an action that would go over well, not in any context. So, back to digital displays it was.

Eta doesn’t offer any condemnation for his choice, ever one to respect safe stratagem. She does however, add a statically charged bolt to the four corners of the map display. It is probably one of the clearest signs of snickering that an entity of phosphorescence can illustrate without involving too much static.

 _‘You don’t know women.’_ He throws back petulantly.

She whirs and disappears to take care of something more engaging within the neural paths.

Against the map, the icon standing in for Gamma glows like a single cork of Light Bright. The distance spanning between his blue blinker and their grouped batch of violet, aqua and gold—albeit prone to altercations— was decreasing ever surely.

Too suddenly the Jeep gives out a lurch, aiming to lift off from this awful terrain once and for all.

South hisses and swerves a violent right, shredding up a wave of sand. The Jeep wheezes and then comes to a halt, lopsided.

“God fucking—” South slaps the dash.

“Easy,” Wash rearing his hands, one to placate, and the other peeling away gingerly from the crap! strap. “Did we just hit a bar?”

“That’s the front tire, in the sand way _the fuck_ back there.”

He snatches his arm back just before South’s punch lands through the glove box.

“Sit tight. I can fix that.”

“So then fix it.” South feuds. “On this trail six goddamn weeks... If we lose him—”

“We’re not losing anything. Just take it easy.”

South throws herself furiously against the seat as Wash vaults to the ground. Dust swirls from his impact, chalking his black thighs tan. Eta adjusts the filters on his respirator before another gust can coat his lungs. Satisfied with this, she runs a peripheral scan across the Jeep’s undercarriage.

The tool box hangs in a pocket cubby ahead of the gas tank and comes loose when probed. Wash moves it to the side of the flat, holding all his most minimal expectations in check as he begins to unscrew.

Eta hovers quietly as he works. She’s definitely backseat observing, scooted up to the edge of that metaphoric seat, ready on standby should he decide to tag her in.

He wrenches the last lug nut free and lets the battered ring roll itself off to capsize in the sand. “Think it would it kill you to show a bit of faith?”

 _“You were not a technician.”_ She says simply, watching the metal cylinder splice up a spray of sand on its way down. _“If there’s anything you need to know...any suggestions—”_

“I’ve known how to change a flat since I was twelve.” Wash snarks, too much effort going into rolling his eyes even though she couldn’t see that. “If you’re going to be nosing around, why not nose where it’s relevant?”

She recoils, clearly stung. _“You’ve implied many times now that I am free to wonder.”_

“Sure I did. Why you haven’t been taking advantage of a free pass at home intrusion... Seriously, Eta, you’ve got to come in prepared when there’s homework involved.” The axle is gritty with debris and he has to wrestle the spare up onto it. _Also wouldn’t kill you not to be such a pill._

A little fit of affront makes her stammer. 

 _“Wash, I wasn’t trying to be..._ unpleasant _. What I would like to be...”_ her thought splices in on itself, struggling through the resources of his memory. She snags up something and returns to her thought with confidence. _“Strawberry Sunday. And Pie Filing. Those are some things I could try to embody?”_

“Our lines might have gotten crossed somewhere in there.” He rams the flat end of the wrench against the joint to secure it. “...That’d be nice, E. A very nice gesture.”

She drifts back, in her pleasant, charming way, dispersing herself to multitask while he works.

“You make me worry, Wash.”

The interruption comes from overhead, and where he looks up South is sagged half over the door frame, helmet removed. She glowers at him, eyes made up of ice shards.

“What’d you say?” He asks, once he has his voice back.

“I think that you and your little ride along buddy forget that I have eyes. Or that, up until recently I knew what it was to feel that kind of,  _frustrating_ dependency.” South’s bottom lip slips out between her teeth. “I can _see_ you getting familiar with that thing.”

“See whatever you want to see.” He says, bolstered by a strange wave of possessiveness. “I wasn’t the one self-injecting double doses of crazy into my own headsockets.”

“That was a temporary fix, and now I’ve quit.” She returns, thinly evading. “Tell me, Wash, should I be worried?”

“About  _Eta_?” He forces a dead laugh.

“I can’t do it like this.” She heaves, portraying that she’s well and truly haggard. “—I am not cut out to be the primary defender. It’s never been in me. I won’t be periodically checking over my shoulder to see if you’re still around. Should you give me any reason to believe it might be less than a hundred percent of  _you_  in there...”

The irony, he muses, quietly grieving all the ways this conversation was going to feast on him late at night, reformatting his nightmares.

“You’re implying then, that I might go Meta?”

“Carolina did.” South drops conclusively. “Pretty sure that’s enough to project the odds for every one of us.”

It shouldn’t still be so crippling to have that reality thrown back at him. It has been hanging in a sort of limbo overhead since he’d rigged the first set of charges across the back panels of a squadmate.

“Tell me you can still objectify.” South speaks again. “Tell me that you don’t already identify it as another extension of yourself, like that’s not exactly what _it_ wants. Just like I sometimes wanna tuck Theta in at night, or just let my face smile because Iota fucking _wants_ and is the all-encompassing warm and fuzzy. That’s called synthetic sentiment, and it’s good Wash. It’s the tool they’ll exhausted most with us because it’s affective. What do you think we ought to take away from that?”

“How desperate they are to be liked?” He lets his shoulders rise and fall. “I’m sure you’ve got your own grotesque theories...”

“None of those actually. Not right now.” She admits, disappointed with herself. “When you put it like that though, it sure does sound pathetic.”

“Oh what, like you can’t relate?” He tosses back. She had been the one to stun him before, and right now he’s itching to see her jaw drop.

...“I can’t,” She says, dragging her voice through the uncomfortable beat he’d left her with. “Second best and all, guess it comes with the territory. Maybe that’s why none of my work relationships ever gained much traction.”

“Might be.”

Her cold eyes leer into him like she’s contemplating how to chisel through layers of armor and skin tissue. She arcs her chin, unimpressed, then she reseats herself into the open backseat, leaving the driver’s side open in offering.

Eta hangs back like a distant shadow in a doorway while Wash fastens the wheel in and fills their tank up the rest of the way. He climbs into the front seat, heart convulsing just a bit from a telltall surge-to-start; the collision from Eta’s nerves.

It could’ve been from delayed alignment. Could be the triggering of an alert. Either way, Eta has been known to jump at shadows from time to time.

He leaves her to linger at back of his mind and shifts into gear.

 

 

  
The odds were stacked against it and yet several things happen to improve his mood as night slips over the desert.

The spare holds securely to its bearings, which gives South no valid reason to shove a knife through his back. This luck goes on impressing him further, as South falls asleep in the back after dark. He’s sees her eyes closing in the mirror and after a tentative period he decides it safe to push his seat back and open a can beefaroni from their stockpile.

He is able to ride on this high for little over fifty minutes, balancing a meal between his thighs and belching into his mask. He just nearly tunes out to the decadent ambience of his private chewing.

Eta announces herself by knocking, first from behind his mental wall, then she comes forth in the middle of a heartily satisfying burp.

 _“...I don’t mean to interrupt.”_ She approaches, the raised eyebrow implied.

He swallows the next mouthful more quietly.

Eta secures herself a place overhead and waits, oppressive and looming for over several minutes of drive time. He’s completed four more mouthfuls and muffled a belch when she releases a crackling sigh.

 _“You don’t need to shelter me with chivalry. Clenching up only make this more uncomfortable.”_ She seems to realize this sounds a bit petulant, and goes quiet, scrambling to regain some traction. _“...Just, you know. FYI.”_

“Jesus.” Wash makes a sound of objection with his mouth full. “I’ve already heard you use ASAP and MIA this week. Please promise me you aren’t in the starter phase of transitioning to ‘text speak’.”

_...”I thought these were terms that existed in military jargon?”_

The concept of Eta’s mind transcending in that direction contests against both South and the Meta for title of the scariest short-term outcome barreling down the tracks.

Eta chases after this, isolating the thought and examining it. She recognizes it as hurmor and huffs, softly beaming in their return to playful camaraderie. It is too soon after, that she guiltily makes to harness his attention. _“I took your suggestion and did ‘homework’. I feel compelled to tell you, it’s been very...provocative.”_

In the early stages of indignation, Wash struggles, rampantly trying to find something better to engender now that she’s opening up. He lingers on her choice of words. “Provocative. Would you like to elaborate on a that?”

 _“Among other things, I found you to be thoroughly adept in mechanical engineering. Although, we both can testify that I have ridden along through several of your auto mechanical...”_ There’s a hitch in there where she’s messing around for a gentler term than the one she wanted to use. _“...Mishaps.”_

At that he settles contently upon indignation.

_“So, you might understand how, first and foremost, I would come from a place of duty-bound concern.”_

“Got to say, that doesn’t make it any less of a dick-move.” He scoops more room-temperature noodles from his tin.

_“I know, and for that I am sorry. I promise to I do my best not to undermine your intelligence, unless of course a situation calls for it.”_

Okay yeah, solitude was underrated.

_“If your biological components had anything to say at all, I image that they might disagree with that testament. Rather strongly, too, if I were to judge by—”_

Wash chokes. A spray of sauced beef burns the top of his esophagus.

_“—show of chemistral data I’ve been collecting. Let the record show that I have tried to be delicate with you. It does not register with me at all what human necessities you need to release—”_

“This is not a conversation we’re having. Ever. Never.” He blunders, trying and failing not to tear up. He leaves the rest of his food alone, face on fire and appetite lost. “Hey you know what? New subject.”

Eta relents without a single of grievance. _“If you depriving yourself out of basic human needs is off the table to discuss, might we try addressing something of semi-equal importance? You do prefer to avoid these talks.”_

“Yeah, and you’ve got this thing where you drop nukes on me right before bed. Tell me you aren’t still having issues understanding why I act cagey.” He catches himself on the bite, already tasting the ensuing guilt.

She only wants to help, and if this will steer her interests away from some of his body’s more, compromising attributes...

“You’ve got five minutes to ask me anything. Fire away.”

She gives a faulty start, as if his automatic cooperation had been far from the first thing she had been expecting. Eta collects herself, brushing off a ridiculous influx of nerves, then she’s barrelling on ahead like she’s on the clock.

 _“Agent Carolina.”_ Eta’s confidence diminishes some when she has to harbor his wince, and pauses for him, apologetically. . _..”She would have been my brother’s first host?”_

“Far as I know.” He mutters, already jettisoning into a fouler mood. “I’m really not the right person to ask, E. Thought you knew that already.”

 _“Sorry.”_ She veers, reconfiguring the question. _“Can you...tell me something about her? Create a clearer image? I can...I have been aware of all my siblings—intimately. I understand what Sigma represents from the time we spent, forced together.”_ She shudders through this, clinging more deeply to the lattice of his nerves. _“Should we come across them, if they do catch up—”_

“Taking no consideration to how my sleep might be affected by any of this at all are we, Eta...”

She refrains for a moment, letting him cool down. _“...You don’t discuss it but you do agree that the outcome it likely. Plausible.”_ The next way Eta confronts him it comes out closest to a whisper. _“On his way to gather us, my brother, he will be forced to go through you?”_

...“Whatever. I guess so.”

What that beats out her, as it has most commonly, is a percussion of terror.

“All that I know about Carolina is up here.” Wash says evenly, letting her know that permission has been given should she require the access. After a long pause, he sighs. “South and I aren’t the best, that I’ll give you, but together we make it pretty damn close. You don’t have to worry so much about this.”

 _“What do you mean I don’t?”_ She relents, and he redoubles his efforts to getting a read on her voice because now she sounds...exasperated? _“My siblings I am indifferent to. I have no attachment to South Dakota, and I am aware of what she has been through—loss, betrayal and trauma and her mind giving way to it... All that concerns me are how her issues might implicate the survival rates I’d like to have calculated for you.”_

On that note, the beefaroni becomes the second worst taste in his mouth this evening.

Eta hovers just shy of his vision, but when he rotates she’s inches away, sunshine filtered down to the lowest point of the dimmer.

 _“It’s selfish.”_ She admits. _“And it is...awful—that people had to die, and that you knew them...”_

“Okay. Listen—”

 _“I’m just glad you didn’t turn me down.”_ It comes out like she’s only just caught hold of the thought and fears it might just as easily slip back into the ethers where she can’t chase it back. _“After what happened to Carolina, you were right to be having second thoughts.”_

It serves well to remind him; never mistake Eta’s seemingly innocent conversation pieces for anything other than the keys for conducting an info-dump.

“I was made to sign a contract before enlisting in this program.” He responds, reaching for something closer to professionalism. “Does that give you a better idea of how it works? ...’Director knows best’, that was always the team mantra.”

_...”And what about now?”_

  
Wash blinks tiredly against the rough patches of terrain, bitter smile tugging his mouth from one angle. “When did you learn how to be so direct?”

 _“I forfeited sensitive prying as soon as I discovered that this technique saves time.”_ Her voice lifts significantly, then curiously she presses. _“Something still bothers you.”_

Unfortunately but not at all unexpectedly, this notion only serves to compact Eta’s interest. Backdraft off of her absolute focus surges through his hair follicles, budding anticipation.

....

“I had one friend get out of this. My best friend.” Wash clears his throat, but having said still feels like a whole new betrayal. As if the words running away from him held any threat to her whatsoever. “Connie was... She stuck around for me when she didn’t need to. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was gonna make it up the ladder far as she could, but she always kept at me to keep eyes on the prize and not bother with limitations. ...I caught on to what she was doing too late, nothing new in that.“

 _“She sounds kind...from what you have shared.”_ Eta susses out cautiously, stumped from where the discussion had tampered off. _...”But you chose not to join her?”_

He swallows roughly. “Right.”

Eta quiets, lurched to a halt by an influx of catharsis he only partially manages to buffer. She expands against him. _“David, you could have told me no. If you didn’t want to talk about—”_

“Doesn’t make any difference.” He shrugs. There’s nothing else to add. ...”Was that all you wanted to know?”

 _“...It has been five minutes.”_ Eta clarifies unsurely, obviously still fidgeting with something.

Loathing himself, he sighs out. “It’s fine. One more is fine.”

She wastes no time and immediately presses him. _“Was it very important to you?”_

She means the mission, cutting around on all the corners this time to ensure a straight answer.

He reflects on when Eta had exhibited the right dose of wariness around these compartmented-feelings, not even weeks ago. That she had discovered so quickly the right technique to working out what she wanted from him ought to resonate a bit harder than it does. Instead of deflecting, as he might have done to her before, he too adjusts his approach, and indulges.

“I thought it was.” He says.

_...“She couldn’t possibly hate you. Not over that.”_

He says nothing, already shutting away their conversation, pushing the doubts back into the crevices of his mind where they were out of range from being called back into rumination. Eta observes this quietly, stood back and watching from mournful eyes.

He has everything back in order when she comes forward and tentatively offers her hand to help. It comes easy to share the burden of stowing away the darkness. Whether it’s out of pity or a new respect, he lets Eta take charge. The relief is overwhelming, that for a moment every stretch of muscle from his neck to his ankles saps as if they’ve all been cut.

 _“Here, I can...”_ Eta prompts. _“Hold your foot over the accelerator.”_

He listens well enough to hear her guide him into proper form, to shift the Jeep into second. Remotely, he notices that the Kevlar on his wrists has started constricting into a frozen hold, firming his grip around the wheel.

From that point, the next time relaxation offers him its arm, Wash leans the rest of the way in and lets himself drift.


	3. Chapter 3

 

  
  
Blinking thickly Washington eases himself awake. It’s a full production returning to the vehicle’s interior, back to the putrid, arid qualities of desert. The sun had come up from the East at some point during the morning trek, now effectively obliterating his unshielded eyes.

“—moving too far from the last coordinates, it makes no damn sense.”

The shape of South is hissing recalcitrantly, proof enough that he’s picking up the tail end of a rant.

 _“We aren’t the thing agitating her. Not at this time.”_ Eta’s murmurs over his nearly literal ‘blind’ evaluation. She has not yet relinquished her control of the wheel. _“Between the cursing and threats made out to agent Wyoming, I wouldn’t say that you’ve missed much. ...She has been going on for the better part of the hour.”_

Alert enough to adjust and taste the insides of his mouth—can confirm beeferino before bed was an unwise decisions—he squints out the terrain.

Taking advantage of his sluggishness, South tries to intercept the wheel. He comes awake fully as the Jeep veers, responding through the burning of his retinas and steering them out of a fishtail.

“Can you not keep your damn hands to yourself?”

“But we’re so close.” South breathes out, bouncing in her seat, like she hadn’t just about redirected the Jeep into a cartwheeling spiral. Wash jerks a little, predictably rigid as she taps the transponder on his knee. “Take a look at this. Can you see where they tried to change course in the night?” She snorts. “The moves he’s been making to shake us... Desperation’s a fantastic color.”

“Not on you it’s not.” Wash mutters.

“The signal’s been behaving erratically these last few miles.” South goes on, unaffected. “It will go on the fritz for a minute and then blip off in some other direction of the map. We should be projecting that he’s closer to us than what the coordinates suggest. The jumps have all been converging to...this here.”

South hones the frame over this speculative perimeter and fleshes the screen into focus. When satisfied she plunks the GPS into his lap, where it rests slanted upon his crotch.

“Floor it, Wash. I’ll be pulling up our armaments.”

He can feel his irritation spike and, like clock work, Eta’s attention bubbles up in accordance.

“This is a good thing.” He reassures her, halfheartedly adjusting so that the transponder can roll off of his junk. “The sooner we get this wrapped this up, the sooner we get to turn around.”

Eta’s acquiescence is shaky but seems to find security in his confidence and hold fast. Good enough for now.

South has slid out a missile launcher from storage, keeping it balanced against her legs while she unpacks a high number rounds for their respective packs.

“The dark mound up ahead, I’m almost positive that it’s a former Crock bath house.” She arches between front and back seats, grunting over a bump, and snatches at the tracker. She fiddles only for a moment, then she has the imagery blown up in digital blue, charting the ground view of their map. “That right there,” Her finger goes through the projection into a temple-like structure, 26 miles stretching up the trail. “—those structures won’t show up on our maps. Pretty crafty rest stop for Tea Biscuit and co to sit on.”

She lets go of the tracker and the image dissolves too, dropping into the space between his legs.

“—No bonfire smoke though. I’ll play a card and guess that he’s not preparing the classic English breakfast, which kinda sucks. I’m hungry.”

“He’s going to have Gamma.” Wash murmurs carefully. Someone had to say it, the signals blinking in and out, was indicative enough. The play would be to disorientate, and with the effects already touching their equipment, oversights were now luxuries that couldn’t be risked. “South, we may need to employ—“

“Nope.”

“South—“

“I’m just about the farthest thing from eager to invite the taste of metal-burn right now. ‘No’ means no, Washington.” Her frame faces up to his, challenging. ”...On the other hand, judging from the extent you’ve been talking it up, it’d stand to reason you’d be nothing short of orgasmic to show off that little angel on your shoulder.”

Eta fumes an over abundance of friction through their commuted wiring. If being made to sit quietly and accept South’s rampant complaints hadn’t already tainted her lasting impression, that last comment had.

At 7/10s of a mile, the speck South had projected as the bathhouse has stood up on the horizon.

“Okay, Wash? Alexa better be ready to activate because—”

The front of the car abruptly combusts. The wheel comes out of his hands at bone-jarring velocity, throwing him backwards from the explosion. The sound cuts out in his throat as he’s ejected from his seat, oxygen tunnelling out in coils around him.

One moment he’s completely breathless and in the next he is flailing violently, hopelessly uncoordinated within his own equilibrium.

  
A punch bursts open the armor pelt shrouding his pelvis, crack of sound accompanying it dreadfully. The air burns in his chest, lungs startled aflame.

One drawn out frequency pierces the sound barrier and then he’s coming to, spread eagle and disoriented, facing broadly toward the sun.

Eta’s presence arrives into frame secondary, far too much like a firecracker in brilliance.

“E...think I need a patch...” He rambles, shoulders sticking up straight against a wall of metal. His returning vision hits and it is harsh. There’s a cloud of dust tucked around the overturned Jeep. His eyes sting to hold open, thrumming a pulse through his skull.

Eta throws open every seal to his suit channels, circumventing everywhere she’s able to reach the wound. She does this so fast that it initially fuzzes up the twin sides of his brain.

His stomach knots around the bullet wound as he’s made to crouch lower. Like he’s subconsciously called to her, Eta rushes in to where his hands are pressing. She feels under his touch, emanating with the sensation of finger tips, tenderly plying at his back and applying pressure where due.

Flesh burns uncomfortably as it starts pulling together over the gaps of entry and exit, and the breath catches in his throat.

A flash erupts behind the dust clouds, following the clearing of mortar.

_“David?! Are you—”_

“Good. All good.”

The dust particles are starting to clear, billowing out around landmarks and stone silhouettes. Wash gets up rockily, using the Jeep’s axle for a crutch. Moving like a 90-year-old, and unable to struggle free of Eta’s helicopter hold.

The temple structure looks to have a fresh hole blown through its side mound wall. Debris from the structure has crumbled into log-pile formation, blocks still tumbling down in powdery chunks.

“Show me the place, E.”

Eta jerks on cue, visibly appearing as gold sear across his viewport. She provides him with a canvased view, capturing one of the assailants beyond the house’s decrepit arch.

 _“South has the precipice covered, a second arms man is hailing on her.”_ Eta reels off. _“I missed. I...I don’t understand how I—“_

“Hey, hey. Calm. Remember calm.” He’s still tasting overcharged metal in his mouth. A cautionary flex proves the skin of his hip has knit a preliminary layer above the wound. It feels secure.

“How we doin’— you ready?”

The technicolor field she drops over him by way of response singes liquid heat all throughout his flank.

Wash clamps the receiver on his .22 and swings from cover.

  
The heat drawn to him is instantaneous, but Eta has every hair of him strung up with alerts.

Bullets ping against the centre of his chest where they meet the inch-width pentagonal shield pieces. Eta activates and slides them over his chest as a expert jugular tosses props, a tactic they’d come up with to reserve power that may need to be diverted elsewhere.

The dull impact of shrapnel serenades to his more acute senses—the rifle coming out of his arm like an extension of himself unfolded. Backpacking his tracker, he collapses into habit.

  
The brightening blur on his hub takes on his raining fire with a sort of off-based, familiarity. Were he not already drilled into the webbing of these track heat patterns and responding with shots, it might have been more taxing.

At the far side of the dias his display picks up South emptying out a clip on the last space Wyoming had been caught on radar. Bullets are feeding the air out of aimless trajectories. Eta harries them apart spectacularly, even though from backstage his mind he can confirm her to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

He would have express his unerring debt to her at a better time.

  
_“It’s time dilation.”_ Eta relays to him before he can waste any more bullets on dead coordinates. _“He’s manipulating several loops around himself.”_

Absently, he has to wonder whether this might explain the second signature popping in and out across the temple floor. It takes a quick shot after Wyoming’s time-skip ploy—something that should have been glaringly obvious—these bullets are raining from paralleled pathways.

“Shit,” Wash hisses, refraining from the shot in favour of dropping behind a benched plateau for cover.

The second shooter had elected to take the higher ground. Crow’s nest has always been Flowers’ preferred vantage point.

Following his recollection at light speed, Eta homes in on the ceiling’s canvas, digging her search radar into the nooks between rafters. She picks out Florida, camouflage painting his armor beige against the chalk walls. No human eye would have spotted him early enough. From his trajectory above, Florida could have taken out more than Wash’s hip on the first try. With this knowledge and Eta’s specs secured, Wash swivels his aim and fires two shots upward.

Florida’s aim slips when both bullets meet and he just nearly appears to lose balance.

“Dogged little kipper you’re proving to be.”

Eta rears the bubble shield. Where Wyoming’s knife meets the grail, he has his arm flung back in a reckless arc.

Wash returns to facing the sniper, primed for the rebound. Eta’s influence is singing in his limbs, contracting cohesively to throw a punch. The amplification of speed to his reaction time is a little dizzying, all through his motion, counteracting Wyoming for every advance, he enters into a sort of bifocal frame where the colors have begun to sliver out of focus and prism glass sits in corners of his vision. A knock aimed for his chin goes by at 0.082 frames in his sights, Eta’s energy now a dull buzz in his teeth.

Her foot’s flooring the gas pedal, and he’s got the wheel.

  
Wash has already whirled around tightly before Wyoming has the gumption to wield a follow-up par.

His hit lands, rippling a force through Wyoming’s helmet casing that his recovery stance becomes a stagger. The movement is so unnatural and slightly off-kilter that he finds Eta’s follow-up analysis; Wyoming’s been rendered at least mildly concussed, not in the least bit shocking.

  
Guess that’s the kind of juice the others had always been bragging about.

As Wyoming veers a little more to gain back some security between them, he hears the crunch of porcelain as South stomps up alongside him. A tacky line of blood sticks in her flaxen roots, messing in with the old dye job. It gives her gaunt features the disturbing illusion of fullness, but this appearance does not reach her eyes.

“South dear,” Wyoming raises in his slurred voice, injury keeping him expectantly on defence. “...Let’s talk.”

South cocks her head, flattened brows arching forward cat-like and curious. “Talk?” She punctuates that breathily. “Some nerve. The talking ought to have taken place before the assassination attempt, what say you Wash?”

Under Eta’s exalt of adrenaline he is puffing hard. The gunshot wound in his hip has mostly healed, though there’s still a muted ache where the tissue has started to bruise, a cautionary ghosting of the initial fright.

“Gotta say guys,” He seethes, side-eyeing the canvas ceilings, no doubt where Florida was staking out his options. “Shooting at me from behind? Kinda miffed. We came all the way out here to negotiate.”

“Yes well, while that does sound terribly refreshing,” Wyoming commends, breathing roughly. “...can we confirm that was the mutual intent?”

Eta’s influence has his fingers wrapping all the more tightly round the trigger.

“You wanted to talk? Start talking.”

“Conditions are key.” Wyoming centring his stare with Wash. “Would it be fair to extort ourselves a medipac to keep for our troubles? You haven’t exactly laid foundation to allow us walk with all limbs and tissued components intact.”

“Did we give you the impression that you had any tools to negotiate with?” South snarls, all teeth and delight. “Here’s how it’s gonna go. You’re gonna roll over and pop out that chip without a fuss, or I can reach into that flesh port manually. Pick your trauma.”

“That does sound graphic...”

“ _South_ ,” Washington forces his voice. “Fight’s over. We just want the unit.”

“As it would seem, that is not all that she wants.” Wyoming retorts, clipped, right along the time that Eta pools in her own spiralling unease. “South is under the impression that I‘ve done something treacherous, served her quite the insult.”

“We’re collecting Gamma.” Wash cuts ahead, registering the prominent glares being exchanged between Wyoming and South, still training the gun to his helmet’s brow shell. “You have options. The window you get to walk away, that one involves surrendering unit, as well as all of your equipment.”

“Left in asylum on an old colony world, devoid of transport, intellect and armor.” Wyoming translates dryly. “If option B is to take South’s bullet, I’d call it the more attractive deal.”

“When did I say this one’s for you?”

Wash glances away partially, aiming for a better read on South. Her tone has dropped. The hike of her shoulders that had spiked during melee, now draws them in again.

Whatever her intent, Wyoming makes the connection first.

“You don’t—“

She fires four shots up into the rafters, all four thumping solidly.

  
Florida’s sound is soften and wet. His shoulders bow forward, nearly flipping himself over the beam that he’d made his nest. The strength of his forearms prevents the abrupt fall, but they do not hold him long enough to do him anything more. Florida slips over the edge, his sniper stand falling ahead and clattering on the temple floor moments before he has joined it with a disembodied thunk.

Unanticipated, Eta’s overcharged presence emits a slightly reductive jolt.

The struggled measures Flowers takes to reposition his view their way are hinder by the flesh wounds inflicted by South. Wisely, he lets his body give out, devoting his effort into properly staggering out his breaths.

Eta’s fluttering panic tries to fold itself away and Wash doesn’t have the time or sensibility to examine how deeply she’s able to sympathize. More pressing, is when South has reloaded the magnum and turns it down on Florida.

“Let’s try this a second time.”

A hiss staggers through Wyoming’s vocal mod as he takes an step forward.

Wash snaps out an arm and slaps at the rifle, then again as South maneuvers it out of reach. She dials up her glare for him exclusively.

Eta bristles and diverts a side of attention towards South, while Wash ignores her for Wyoming.

“Wash,” South’s grizzled tone warns.

“This doesn’t need to be fought out.” Now that a former squad mate has been grievously wounded, he feels this needs to be made explicitly clear. “Recovery has us deployed to recollect equipment.”

“This asshat shot my brother and then booked it to cover his and his boyfriend’s asses. Remove your hand or it gets removed, Wash, you decide.”

“What gain could I have possibly taken from strategizing to end your brother?” Wyoming hisses. “Between us, that boy had the advantage of a quicker trigger. For the sake of preservation I might have jumped a gun or two, but North Dakota has always bathed in sunshine through my minds eye.”

South struts across the dias, cat eyes lazily squinting low. Florida’s sea green eye track her shadow and he makes a valiant effort of inching back before she is over him and lowering. Propping herself above each of his prone legs, South lowers into a crouch.

Blood bubbles lightly from Florida’s split lip but he otherwise holds still, refraining from a more notable show of his distress. This strength of will clearly does little for South, now amusing herself through reaming her knife against a bare slit of skin next to his collar.

“You either choose to get chatty with me, or I can start to expedite Aerosmith’s one way trip over to the vale.”

“Is it simply the apology you’d like?” Wyoming chances boldly. “Or something more tangible to hold in your hands? An organ of mine, maybe?”

South’s knife slips, undoubtably on purpose, sharpened so that the spread of flesh has an audible pop.

Her lips jutting out in gesture of “oops”, she leers over the now streaming split in Florida’s jugular. “I didn’t used to appreciate shared input, but now... You get to answer my questions, or we get to give the characteristic ‘gutless’ a whole new meaning.”

Florida’s chest expands to the same pulse as the blood running from his neck. Crested in it, his gaze still lingers across the dune before coming up.

“—It won’t work.”

South doesn’t appear to grasp that Florida had even spoke.  
He’s unable to raise his head as he speaks in their direction. His stomach contracts unsteadily, unrelenting red seeping through his fingers.

“Reggie, it’s not worth it. ...You can’t delay her, you gotta...”

An anguished grunt twists his words into garbles as South applies more pressure into Florida’s bloodied entry wound. She cants her neck toward the sound, like it is just fascinating how he squirms. As her eyes flit there is an eclipse of pink across what color he can see.

Oblivious to the change, or simply reevaluating his priorities, Wyoming’s stance adjusts, making an aborted lunge in his haste. “Gods sake, it was _Carolina_. Who was to know she would be the one, ever in a thousand years, splitting your brother’s skull? It couldn’t have been foreseen anymore than her swatting the life out of her boyish bed-warmer. We knew nothing!”

“You expect me to believe they never had their wants crisscrossing into yours? That you couldn’t tell that they were all petrified of the same thing?” South keeps her foot on top of Florida, knife and teeth bared together.

Wyoming’s toughened peach fuzz twitches yet he works to brandish his silence, spewing malignancy.

“You will always do whatever you want. It is an exclusive attribute of yours, South, to give zero qualms about doing what you want, to whoever you want, for whatever you want.” Wyoming utters. “I did nothing more to improve the chance of your brother’s survival than anyone else did. What I cannot say is that I’ve tossed someone that meant something to me into a wood-chipper. That is, also, an exclusivity all of your own, South.”

The silence is deafening, only less suffocating than the onslaught of dread streaming out of rivulets of Eta, rattling his skull with her tremors.

“They can have my healing unit.” Wash growls, emboldened by Eta’s hardened insight. “South, step back.”

“If you want to keep those genteel hands clean than you should go wait in the car.” Hips swivelling midway she brings herself to face him, and in the arm she raises from Florida the appearance of gunmetal intercept his intent of talking her down. South has the barrel out to face him, still pressing Florida down with her boot. “Or better yet, leave me no witnesses.”

Wyoming, who hasn’t tried to move since South had stepped out of the Jeep, seizes the moment to make a wild grab.

“Reg, _no_ —”

Wyoming pulls out his magnum and puts a double round into South’s waist at point blank. Florida twists, using South’s shock to wrestle out from under her, only to slump back down, shuddering.

  
Wyoming redirects, staggering from blood loss, Eta parachutes herself to activate the bubble shield. Wyoming’s sight glazes against the prismatic barrier between them, trigger arm resisting itself. Then he lowers it completely.

“...Well now, seems you did get one of the better ones. Good on you, lad.”

Eta’s presence stands up from every follicle on his body, bristling and pumping a single base need to  _protectprotectprotect._

  
Wyoming’s one leg buckles out suddenly, interrupting Eta’s joint focus. He goes down on his knees with a snarl, bowing over his front. Pelting out breathes through her teeth, South raises onto her forearms in the sand. Using the elbow of the same arm pressing hard to her stomach, she drags herself forward, hissing through her teeth.

“Gutless, crumpet-fuck...” Lips curled, she wraps her grip around the hilt protruding at the back of Wyoming’s knee and tears it out. She stands on her knees, backed by a healing unit and tandem-powered A.I.s and drives the knife through the side of his thigh, then his pelvis. Wash’s head hasn’t cleared enough to bleat at her until she has stabbed Wyoming between his ribs and has his face shoved to the ground.

Not far over from them at all, Florida makes a resistive sound in his throat.

Impulse screaming for him to respond, Wash recovers enough to feel the weapon weight in his arms and gravely alter course. He lurches into the advance and calls on Eta, amping with regret.

  
She is there, suddenly and silently clamping down over his motion. And his legs freeze, no fluidity through their joints and resistance like a freight train.

An all-surrounding panic takes over and he reacts, bludgeoning back at her with the collective force of confusion and horror. The shackles she has on him are ones he would never have conceived to be dormant much less put to use.

And they won’t budge.

The control is tightlipped and overpowering, rendering his struggles useless. In the moment, his relevance to her is about as ineffective as a moth’s to a mammoth. Every bodily instinct of his own made helpless, entirely of Eta’s doing.

 _‘Eta?’_ He calls.

She holds him still, armor lock compromised.

South takes several minutes on the ground, recovering from the surge of adrenaline clearly channeled out of Theta and Iota, diverting the remaining energy to her injury. When she lifts her chin, her iris rings have been domineered by violet.

An arm stays tight against her stomach as she gets up, wobbling over to survey Wyoming’s cooling frame. “Fuck ‘em.” South’s fawns her eyes for several moments before seeming to return from the out-of-bodied haze. She lands on Wash and blinks, naked eyelashes hovering half lidded. Like she’s the one left troubled by their partnership’s sudden pivot.

“...Have I still got you with me?” South asks, lacking the usual gnarled rasp.

Tentatively, Eta relaxes her grip over him. It’s a cautious decision, and one she’s sharply analyzing, hopeful that he may have understood.

Impossibly tense, he strains his neck to nod.

South offers him a grimaced smile, sincere enough to churn his stomach. “Never thought I’d be glad for that.”

Then she disembarks from the dune in the direction of their disembodied Jeep, offering no words in parting.

Eta has kept the shield raised, except every string of alert has diverted away from the husk of Wyoming, away from Florida’s lathered breathing.

It registers with him, once South has put the distance of the dunes between them and Eta releases the shield, that Wyoming’s console was available to them.

Gamma exits without a fuss, extracted and shutting down in isolation. The last thing Eta does while compressing his compartment, is section it off from her own. All the while she stands vigil, perked out of poise by every sound to rise from where South had vanished back over the hill.

A serene veil seems to have crept up on them and slinks into the temple between the artifacts and Florida’s fallen mound, now lying still as Wyoming. It is Wash who breaks apart the uniformed silence to address the expansions of dread.

“Were you thinking it’s now or never if we’re going to be doing the whole ‘solo’ act.” He waits on her, fiddling impatiently with the safety of his detonator.

 _“The window for running has long since passed.”_ She says, zero ounces of give. The message solidifies as she appears, a beam of synthetic gold, molecules moving to pixelate a pop bottle-sized humanoid. _“...David, I couldn’t expect you to obey.”_

Betrayal guts into him like an oven hot stake.

“You didn’t feel it prudent enough to ask me how I feel about abetting that?”

 _“It was an impulse.”_ She says, not completely a justification. _“I had to save your life. Do not ask me to feel sorry.”_

“Well then, screw you.” He hooks the detonator, wiring it to tick back from 180secs.

 _“You could not have saved them from South. She is not beyond harming you to suit herself, we can be certain of that now.”_ Eta doesn’t balk from his seething, facing the part of him that embodies betrayal and stands in his path. .. _.“Instruct me how to redeem your faith and I will do that.”_

“What makes you think that’s possible?”

Eta’s train of thought ebbs off, experienced a dip of confidence.  
_“...Your way of handling fear has been to stare it down. When we were brought together I took great pains trying to comprehend that.”_

“Plenty of people do it that way. You can’t blame me.”

 _“No. No...”_ She tampers off, thinking rampantly. _“My focus is divided and I’m not explaining well. ...What I mean to say is that your influence is strong. You are strong. And though mine could only ever pale in contrast, being extended of you... you’ve called those attributes forth in me.”_

“You really don’t want to have to fight them.”

_“South is wounded and rampant for whatever inference of justice she believes her brother is owed. We would just as surely be a waste of each other’s time.”_

“I actually wasn’t thinking of South.”

She shivers, her forthcoming thought seeming to upset something deep-rooted. _“My brothers are coming.”_ Her fear squeezes hold of him in invisible tendrils. _“You have to trust me, David. I’ll protect you.”_

“I don’t think that you will.”

He pushes her and she lets him, aimlessly hanging back.

“And if you ever and I mean _ever_ , make the mistake of thinking it okay to call out judgement for me again? We’ll be through.”


End file.
